Free Strawman's Hammock by Darryl Wimberley Page A

outdoorsmen misconstrued the warden’s authority, greatly overestimating it in some cases, radically underestimating it in others.
    A game warden did not, for instance, and contrary to popular opinion, have greater authority to search and seize than other law enforcers. A warden had to have probable cause to look into a footlocker in the bed of a truck, or into the cabin of a boat, just as did a city cop or FBI agent. The difference was that courts routinely allowed game wardens much greater latitude in deciding what probable cause was than the latitude allowed a state trooper or city detective. After all, a warden could not reasonably be required to wait for a warrant before searching a man’s truck for deer shot out of season, or be forced to wait for a judge to say, yes, you can open Mr. Buchanan’s duffel bag to see if he’s bagged a dove or six more than his limit.
    A Florida highway patrolman could stop you for driving drunk as a hoot owl, but without a warrant or plain-sight evidence he couldn’t look to find the cocaine in your trunk. A game warden, in some circumstances, could.
    Barrett had stopped a ’68 Olds, on one occasion, near Jacksonville. The Olds fit the description of a vehicle recently involved in the shotgun homicide of a convenience store owner.
    But a general description of a car did not give Barrett the right to search the vehicle or its driver. Bear knew that. So did the driver. And the driver could have rolled on down the road but for a game warden who came easing onto the shoulder beside Barrett’s cruiser in an olive-green truck.
    â€œMorning, gentlemen. I been listenin’ to my radio,” the warden spoke up for the benefit of the trooper and local sheriff. “What we got here?”
    â€œJust a routine stop,” Barrett had replied. “Looks like he’s about ready to go.”
    â€œWell, I smell somethin’,” the warden declared, and nodded to the car’s backseat.
    â€œThat a rod ’n reel, sir?”
    The driver stared straight ahead.
    â€œMy brother’s.”
    The warden strolled back to the rear of the car. Bent deeply over the badly rusted trunk.
    â€œI smell fish in here. Gettin’ pretty ripe, seems like. You been fishin’, sir?”
    â€œNo,” the driver denied it.
    â€œGot a fishing license, sir?”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    â€œWell, there’s definitely something fishy, here. I think I better look.”
    â€œYou son of a bitch,” the driver came boiling out of his car, but he couldn’t keep that warden from opening the trunk of that ’68 Olds.
    There it was, a shotgun and a bag filled with cash. The driver was eventually convicted of armed robbery and second-degree murder. The warden’s search was allowed, therefore the fruits of that search, however unrelated, were also allowed. Who, after all, could argue with a game warden’s sense of smell?
    Many folks, even experienced hunters, assumed that wardens could only enforce laws related to Fish & Game on lands that were hunted or fished. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jarold Pearson could enforce any state law on any private or state-controlled land.
    A warden was not a Barney Fife looking out for Bambi. He was a professional lawman working in a sophisticated system with the same responsibilites and duties as any trooper, sheriff, or agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He was the perfect man to show Barrett Raines the camps and hideaways hiding the county’s newest and most persecuted population from the protection of the law.
    Bear and Jarold put in at the public boat ramp in Steinhatchee. There was no crystal strand along this beachhead. No sand, in fact, at all. You could not even see the Gulf, only great swathes of water that cut through the grass and zigzagged away from the slips of boats berthing near the ramp, aisles of water that trekked through antedeluvian carpets to some